Nonlocal Spin Transport Experiments

Sebastian Goennenwein

The coupling between charge and spin transport channels provided by the spin Hall effect enables a variety of charge-driven and/or charge-detected spin transport experiments. Magnetic insulators hereby are a very attractive class of materials, since they allow for pure spin current transport, while charge currents are prohibited.
The presentation shall give an overview over non-local spin transport experiments in magnetic insulator/metal heterostructures. More specifically, I will introduce the socalled magnon mediated magnetoresistance (MMR) detected in non-local charge transport experiments in yttrium iron garnet/Pt bilayers [1,2]. I will then critically discuss the importance of magnons for the MMR, and show that the MMR concept enables studying the incoherent superposition of magnons generated by several different spin Hall active Pt metal strips. Last but not least, I will address recent MMR type experiments aimed at detecting magnon condensates.

[1] Cornelissen et al., Nat. Phys. 11, 1022 (2015)
[2] Goennenwein et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 107, 172405 (2015)